PS3A PlayTime – week of 3 December, 2012

Come join us once a week where we prove that our spare time isn’t entirely consumed by pounding away at a keyboard, but also by mashing the buttons of our DualShock 3s and Vitas. What games have we been playing? What cool adventures have we been on? It’s PlayTime!

This week’s news covers a few things that have been a long time coming. We add Crash Lab and Vlambeer to the growing list of PlayStation Mobile developers we’ve had the fortunate opportunity to speak with in regards to their PSM offerings. There was a few hot releases for PSN last week, but we have at least one fan of WRC; wonder who that is.

The PS3Attitude team has played a lot, achieved a lot, and watched a lot. Notice all the PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale gaming and high praise. We do love the games that love us back, and this fighting game with PlayStation…well… all-stars is nothing short of spectacular. Will there be enough room in our EU/UK hearts for Retro City Rampage? So long as the Hobbit doesn’t give us a migraine with its 48 fps and native 3D via Red cameras at 5k resolution.

What I’m playing: PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale has been a revelation on both PS3 and Vita for me – so much fun. I needed a little ‘full-blown hardcore’ in my life, so I grabbed Bulletstorm and did the single player campaign while laid up with a cold. So much fun it literally, not figuratively, hurt at times.

Accomplishments: Bulletstorm can’t go five minutes without a memorable moment, although I think the battle against the giant mutated Venus Human Eater was probably the stand-out boss battle for me. I also enjoy leashing an opponent, kicking them towards their friends, attaching a flail gun grenade to them in mid air and then exploding them on their return to their crew. Bulletstorm calls it a ‘Homie Grenade’. I call it epic fun.

What I’m watching and reading: Thanks to being laid up, I did manage to catch a few TV shows but they were all just ‘wallpaper’. Nothing of any real note. The only movie I saw this week was Crawlspace. Better than I expected, but didn’t completely rock my world.

Majiesto

What I’m playing: Played Uncharted: Fight for Fortune, Gravity Rush, and Sine Mora; all on the Vita.

Accomplishments: Already got 100% of the trophies for Fight for Fortune. Fantastic card game. Still have the two downloadable expansions to purchase, though.

What I’m watching and reading: Saw The Hobbit already and absolutely love the new HFR format. It reaches a whole new level of detail for film, although I can see how some people will be turned away from it. Also, been re-watching The Office on Netflix.

Accomplishments: I’d forgotten how bloody hard Ninja Gaiden is! After completing about half of the story on NGSP, I thought I was ready to tackle some Ninja Trials. However, after barely scraping through the first 10 challenges (out of 76!), I decided some more practice is definitely in order before I try the rest.

What I’m watching and reading: I hope they paid a bonus to the guy who bleeped out all the unnecessary swearing at the VGAs. Don’t get me wrong, I swear as much as the next man, but the whole show just came across as rather puerile; a real shame considering the amount of talent on display.

Accomplishments: I got a new TV! That’s my big announcement, and boy is it nice to be playing PS3 again. This is why I’ve been favoring my Vita. I discovered that PSASBR does share progress and unlockables across PS3 and Vita via the cloud automatically, but does not share trophies. The actually trophies are the same, but they are not unified. Smart As… is a lot of fun to play and keeps getting better. Though I am ready to start changing the clock to burn through it a bit faster, as this can be done easily all the while never closing the app. Changing the clock in settings instantly changes the calendar day on the main menu of the game.

Pid is great, still planning on reviewing it as soon as I’m done. I’m not putting it off, but now that I’ve got my new TV, I’m pumped and ready to actually appreciate the graphics as they were intended. Was pid an exciting adventure through space or did the lack of a double jump do it in for good? I’ll let you know what I think soon enough.

What I’m watching and reading: My watch list is pretty much the same. Finished season 2 of The Walking Dead on Netflix for PS3. Finally rid of that season, sheesh it was horrendous! Can’t wait for season 3 to become available because my good buddy Twitter has been telling me that its a vast improvement over season 2.

Accomplishments: Got all of the Sonic the Fighters trophies within about 20-30 minutes, which is ridiculous. And that was on failing the end boss!

What I’m watching and reading: Been reading Resident Evil: The Umbrella Conspiracy and the latest GamesMaster magazine. Watched X-Men: First Class, The Avengers, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Black Swan in movies, How I Met Your Mother, Take Me Out and The Big Bang Theory in shows.